ALBANY COUNTY — Elizabeth Whalen, the county’s health commissioner, urged patience on Monday after the governor’s Friday announcement that New Yorkers with comorbidities — including kidney and lung diseases, heart problems, diabetes, obesity, and cancer — will be eligible for COVID-19 vaccinations.

The county’s vaccine supply — it will get 1,100 doses this week — remains limited, said Whalen.

She described the list of comorbidities as “very broad categories of chronic disease, including obesity, which represents a third of our population.”

At this point, Whalen said, the county does not have enough doses to vaccinate the essential workers it was originally charged with inoculating.

The original system in New York State called for tier 1a — nursing home workers and residents and hospital workers — to be vaccinated first. This was followed by 1b essential workers and people 75 and older. The state, following federal recommendation, then added people 65 and older.

This swelled the ranks of vaccine-eligible New Yorkers to 7 million. With the addition of people with comorbidities, Governor Andrew Cuomo said at his press briefing on Monday, “We have about 10 million now currently eligible.”

He also noted, “We have 15 million total population.”

Currently, New York, based on population, is receiving about 300,000 doses of vaccine each week from the federal government. If that rate were to hold, Cuomo estimated it would take a year to complete vaccinations in New York.

He expressed hope that the production rate would pick up and that Johnson & Johnson would get emergency use authorization for its vaccine as both Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech had.

“That could be a game changer,” said Cuomo on Monday. “Single dose, no super cold refrigeration chain needed. That could make a major difference.”

Both Pfizer and Moderna vaccinations require two shots several weeks apart.

Cuomo on Monday reiterated that this week closes the vaccination of hospital workers. “We’re at about 75 percent ….,” he said, noting hospitals had had two months to vaccinate their staffs. “We’re going to take the excess allocation from the hospital workers and use it for people with comorbidities.”

When Cuomo had announced the list of comorbidities at his press conference on Friday, he said, “Comorbidities and age are the major factors in COVID mortality. Just hear this one number: 94 percent of the people who die from COVID are people with comorbidities or other underlying conditions. Ninety-four percent.”

Comorbidities must be validated

On Monday, he said, “People with comorbidities can begin making appointments on the state’s site February 14, to open February 15, on the local health department sites. The appointments can start on the 15th. We’ll leave it to the local health departments about when they start scheduling.”

He also said, “There will be validation of the comorbidity. People will need to bring a doctor’s letter or medical information that evidences that they have this comorbidity, or they now sign a certification when they get the vaccination ... Those three options are all available.”

Again, like the scheduling, it will be left up to local health departments what validation they will require, Cuomo said, and the state will audit the validation process.

On Monday, three Democratic Capital Region State Assembly members — Patricia Fahy, John McDonald, and Carrie Woerner — released a statement urging the state to set up a pre-registration system for vaccine appointments to reduce anxiety and uncertainty.

“The vaccine distribution process is confusing, frustrating, and makes an already-anxious populace even more so,” they wrote. “We need a straightforward system that matches supply with demand.

“We recommend the governor and the Department of Health move to a pre-registration system that will allow the state and counties to simplify the scheduling process, eliminate the competition for vaccine appointments, reduce the need to travel several hours to secure a vaccination, and overall reduce the stress people are experiencing.”

The state worked with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Cuomo said, to come up with the list of conditions that would make New York adults eligible to receive a vaccination:

— Cancer (current or in remission, including 9/11-related cancers);

— Chronic kidney disease;

— Pulmonary disease, including but not limited to, COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), asthma (moderate to severe), pulmonary fibrosis, cystic fibrosis, and 9/11-related pulmonary diseases;

— Intellectual and developmental disabilities including Down syndrome;

— Heart conditions, including but not limited to heart failure, coronary artery disease, cardiomyopathies, or hypertension (high blood pressure);

— Immunocompromised state (weakened immune system) including but not limited to solid organ transplant or from blood or bone marrow transplant, immune deficiencies, HIV, use of corticosteroids, use of other immune-weakening medicines, or other causes;

— Severe obesity (body mass index of 40 kg/m2), obesity (body mass index of 30 kg/m2 or higher but less than 40 kg/m2);

— Pregnancy;

— Sickle cell disease or Thalassemia;

— Type 1 or 2 diabetes mellitus;

— Cerebrovascular disease (affects blood vessels and blood supply to the brain);

— Neurologic conditions including but not limited to Alzheimer's Disease or dementia; and

— Liver disease.

Patience urged

So far, Albany County has administered 3,400 doses of vaccine, Whalen said on Monday. Last week was the first time the county gave second doses, which Whalen called “very exciting.”

She noted it takes about two weeks to develop antibodies.

Whalen said that second doses tend to produce a “more robust immune response.”

Whalen received her second dose on Thursday, and Friday night had a “little fever,” she said. “Saturday, I was fine again,” she said, adding, “It’s worth it.”

A lot more people want the vaccine than supply currently allows, said Whalen. Once supply increases the health department will target populations that are “vaccine hesitant,” she said, “really rolling this out in a very deliberate manner.”

She emphasized the importance of continuing to follow protocols like mask-wearing and social-distancing and said that discussions on when to stop those protocols — based on achieving herd immunity — would be part of a national dialogue influenced by the vaccine rate across the country.

“We may be having those discussions as early as the beginning of summer,” Whalen speculated.

She also said, “Right now our only limitation is supply. So please be patient.”